Staff MemberPremium Member

Creativity has no limits, and it is fun to marvel at all the amazing technical innovations that continue to pour out of the minds of engineers. One case in point is the following idea from the Japanese company, KDDI. They are working on a touchscreen device that gives the sensation that you are actually pushing physical buttons. Here's a quick quote from the AndroidPolice article talking about this interesting new tech,

This new technology is made possible by combining a pressure sensitive touchscreen with haptic vibrations, which results in the sensation that you’ve actually moved something. One really nice thing about this is that this advancement doesn’t add any addition bulk to the device – the touchscreen can be created in the same size and thickness of current devices.

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From the looks of things, it will be a little while before we see this start to show up in phones. This may not be an earth-shattering idea, but sometimes the little things turn out very useful.

Actually sounds like the Storm2, which used piezo buttons for the "click". The screen actually moved a very minuscule amount, but felt like a much bigger press due to the piezo buttons activating and clicking. The original storm actually had a physical button under the screen.

The Storm2's screen actually worked fairly well. I enjoyed typing on it and it was quite accurate. It had its own inherent issues though. Basically moving parts offer more points of weakness.

The storm 2's screen felt like the whole screen was a button, and as you depressed you felt the flex and the click of the screen.. eckkk.. I cant imagine how different from haptic feedback on kboards now that this tech will be... But alas this is a physical analysis that one can only truly experience in RL.